The Recovery Ride

Last week, I discovered the concept of "The Recovery Ride".  Well, to say I just now discovered this concept isn't necessarily true.  But rather, I should say I paid attention to what it was.  Why? you might ask?  (Or you might not - who knows). 

Well - here's why:  as I am perusing the interweb, books and magazines, and digesting tweets and FB posts from various super athletes while trying to build this year's training plan, I read about the greatness of the recovery ride.  And upon asking for more information, I was delighted to learn that it consists of a relatively easy and somewhat short ride designed to aid the legs 'recover' from hard rides in prior days.

As someone who loves a good ride - especially an easy and short one - I knew I had to investigate further.  After searching for 0.25s on Google, I was presented with 53,200,000 items to consider.  What I quickly found was that the Recovery Ride basically consisted of the following attributes:

- Should last between 1/2 - 1 hour
- Heart rate should stay in "Zone 1" or low "Zone 2" or 60-65% max HR
- Pedal cadence should be between 80-90 RPM
- Not as important as regular training - they do not significantly improve endurance but do slightly accelerate the recovery process
- May or may not actually be helpful at all - depends on which one of the 53,200,000 you choose to read
- Gives another opportunity to get on the bike on what would otherwise be an "off" day

Given all of that, I decided to do my first Recovery Ride this past Saturday.  I had just completed a day of hard lifting in the gym + an indoor RPM (spinning) class on Thursday, and a hard interval ride on the trainer on Friday.  Saturday would have been of "off" day for me otherwise, so I chose to give the Recovery Ride a go.

My ride:
- Time:  45:13
- 9.94 miles
- Average speed:  13.2 mph
- 687 calories burned
- Average HR: 126
- Average cadence: 82

Impressions:
Enjoyable and easy ride.  Listened to Adele while watching the kids play in the neighborhood from my garage.  I opted to ride on the trainer rather than on actual roads since I knew there would be no way to control my HR while riding on pavement.  And even on the trainer, I found that I had to concentrate to keep my cadence so low which kept my HR down.  Going that slow is HARD!!!! 

I'm not sure of the benefits, however.  I did not marvel at how well my legs felt afterwards as did many who commented on the interweb and in my interviews with real people.  That said - I would do it again.  Any time I can get on the bike, I consider it a good thing.  But as I ramp up my training to include running and swimming, I imagine the Recovery Ride will likely lose out.

So, until next time.......... 

Lovin' My Bike Trainer

We are three weeks into the new year and so far, I have found that I am LOVING my bike trainer.  I have ridden it 3-4 times per week since I got in last month and am seeing much improvement in my bike fitness.  I have also completed four weeks of cycling specific weight training that has helped as well. 

I don't have a power meter (anyone who wants to buy me one, the Cyclops Powertap Pro Alloy Training Wheel Set would be peachy), so I am using average speed, distance, and revolutions that the rear wheel spins for a given workout to determine improvement.  For one particular interval workout, the revolutions for a workout on 12/24/11 was 13,656 for 1 hour.  On 1/14/12 it was 14,748 - roughly a 7.4% improvement.  I'll take that...

As for the weight training, I am doing squats, hack squats, leg presses, leg curls, bench press, pull-ups, and dead lifts.  So far, the training has been designed more to help me get used to the motions of the workouts, but I can already tell a difference in how I feel on the bike.  My back is stronger and I feel like I have more stamina on the bike.  Yay!

The slow carb diet has was difficult to get into at the start of the year because I had to get back used to traveling again which was difficult.  But this past week I finally had a 'breakthrough' week and finally earned my cheat day (today).  I also lost 5 pounds, which is encouraging as well. 

And that, my friends, pretty much sums up the progress so far this year.  Overall, I am pleased with where I am at this point and am looking forward to continuing on in the coming weeks/months.  Next week I will be in Bham all week so it will be another good week to stay with the program.  And on 1/30/12 I will start an 11 week Outseason Training Program where I will add in some running and other high intensity cycling.  I am modeling this Program after the free resources at endurancenation.us (if I any of you wanted to purchase me their training packages, feel free to do that as well). 

Anyway - that's it for now.  Until next time..... have a great day!

A New Year....

A new year is upon us and with it, another chance at new promises and resolutions.  But as I was perusing Facebook last week, I noticed an update that said "I don't make resolutions, I make goals" or something like that.  That resonated with me as I (along with everyone else) would make annual resolutions that would last a few days at best.  Then back to normal.  But after reading that post, I thought to myself:  "Self, instead of the yearly fail-fest, why not take the same approach as that other lad and make a few goals.  And work to achieve them".  So that is what I am doing this year and will outline them below.

1.  Complete two half Ironman's.  One will be in Kansas in June, the other will be a repeat of Augusta in September.

2.  Finish Augusta HIM in under 5.5 hours.  That is a stretch - but with proper training and fitness, I hope to be able to do it. That would be almost a 2 hour improvement over 2011, but I can improve the bike by about 30-45 mins, and should be able to cut over an hour off my run time.

3.  Ride my bike at least 2000 miles this year.  That includes rides on the trainer - total miles greater than 2k miles.

4.  Update this blog at least 2x per month.

One thing I will also be doing this year is posting my weight from time to time.  That's going back to an earlier post on 'being honest' with myself.  As of 1/02/2012, my weight is 284 lbs.  That's pretty much where I started last January where the Slow Carb diet had me drop about 40 lbs in 3 months.  That will be my plan again - Slow Carb (starting tomorrow when I return to work) - but will add a ton more workouts than last year.  I have kicked ass on the bike trainer and gym for the last few weeks and am happy with my progress.  The weight will come - oh yes - it will come.

And that, my friends, is the 1st post of the new year.  Here's to wishing you much success and happiness in this new year.  CarpeAnnum!!!!